Massive Attack

Massive Attack are a Bristol collective formed in 1988 by Robert "3D" Del Naja, Grant "Daddy G" Marshall, Adrian "Tricky" Thaws, and Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles, four veterans of the Wild Bunch sound system who invented a genre almost by accident. Their 1991 debut Blue Lines, with its slow hip-hop tempos, dub basslines, and soul vocals from Shara Nelson, is routinely credited as the first trip-hop album. The group refined the template across Protection, the commercial peak Mezzanine, 100th Window, and Heligoland, enlisting collaborators such as Horace Andy, Tracey Thorn, Elizabeth Fraser, Sinéad O'Connor, and Hope Sandoval along the way. Now a duo of Del Naja and Marshall, they have sold more than 13 million records, placed Blue Lines and Mezzanine on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums list, and built a live show known as much for its confrontational visual politics as for the music itself.